Federal authorities in northwest Indiana Thursday announced tax and other criminal charges against five public officials and a contractor, including city council members from Gary, Hammond and East Chicago.
The charges were part of a long-running investigation of public corruption in the region, said David Capp, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Indiana. The initiative, dubbed Operation Restore Public Integrity when it was launched in 2001, has seen more than 50 public figures sent to federal prison in little more than a decade — a rate that, per capita, well exceeds neighboring Cook County.
“We have a very active public corruption task force in northwest Indiana,” Capp said Thursday at a news conference at the federal courthouse in Hammond.
Of the half-dozen individuals charged Thursday, only two are charged with crimes directly related to their public posts. Hammond City Councilman Alfonso Salinas, 52, is accused of taking more than $10,000 in bribes from a tree-trimming business in exchange for contracts to do more than $300,000 worth of work in Salinas’ district.
David Johnson, 56, owner of Dave’s Tree Service, was charged with paying a bribe to a government official.
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said the charges against Salinas come as no surprise to observers in the city, and said officials had refused to pay bills from Dave’s Tree Service because the company had apparently been hired by Salinas without going through normal city contracting procedures.
“We have known the feds were investigating Al for some time now,” McDermott said. “The one success of all this is that the city’s internal controls worked. Those bills were flagged.”
Merrillville Town Court employee Virlissa Crenshaw already has reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to charges she stole $176,763 by taking cash used by defendants in the town court to post bond, and failed to report income to avoid some $55,000 in taxes in 2009, Capp said.
Gary Councilwoman Marilyn Krusas, who has represented the city’s lakefront Miller neighborhood since 2001, was charged with a single count of tax evasion, for allegedly filing no tax returns in the last 20 years and attempting to hide a $230,000 inheritance payout she got in 2009-10.
Krusas entered a plea of not guilty at a hearing Thursday afternoon. Her attorney, former Gary mayor Scott L. King, said outside the courthouse that the charges against Krusas had nothing to do with her job as a council member.
“Her conduct as a public official has been beyond reproach and continues to be beyond reproach,” said King, a former federal prosecutor.
Former East Chicago library director Manny Montalvo, 38, was charged with falsely claiming a total of nearly $80,000 for unreimbursed expenses for business and medical expenses on his 2008 and 2009 returns.
East Chicago City Councilman Juda Parks, 40, who also is a city police officer, was charged with tax evasion for allegedly failing to file tax returns for 2008 and 2009.
Lake County, Indiana, has been especially fertile ground for federal prosecutors. In August, Lake County Coroner Thomas Philpot was found guilty of improperly paying himself bonuses while serving as county clerk.
McDermott, who also is chairman of the Lake County Democratic Party, said the elected officials indicted Thursday are “bad apples” who reflect outdated attitudes from the region’s long history of political chicanery.
“This notion that all politicians in Lake County are bad is wrong. … There are some relics, who think they can get rich on taxpayers and outsmart the feds,” he said. “That’s crazy.”
[email protected] More Top Picks Best Dobsonian Telescopes For Deep Sky